Advice about a package fork (displaycal)

[Christian Marillat]

Hi,

[Please Cc me I'm not subscribed to this list]

I was the displaycal (python2 version) maintainer but asked his removal
as the curren maintain doesn't reply to e-mails

A fork has been done, but as discussed in
https://github.com/eoyilmaz/displaycal-py3/issues/96
people do not agree to the license and project.binary name.

Can you give me your opinion ?

Christian

[Francesco Poli]

On Tue, 05 Jul 2022 08:32:09 +0200 Christian Marillat wrote:

> Hi,

Hello Christian,

>
> [Please Cc me I'm not subscribed to this list]

Done.

>
> I was the displaycal (python2 version) maintainer but asked his removal
> as the curren maintain doesn't reply to e-mails
>
> A fork has been done, but as discussed in
> https://github.com/eoyilmaz/displaycal-py3/issues/96
> people do not agree to the license and project.binary name.
>
> Can you give me your opinion ?

Well, first of all, I should say that the GNU GPL does not require a
name change for modified/derived/forked versions of a work.
And copyright law does not cover names, as far as I can tell.

Depending on the details of diplayCAL, and on the jurisdiction under
consideration (which may vary across different hypothetical lawsuits,
due to rules for the selection of venue...), trademark laws of a
specific country could impose a name change for a fork.

And anyway, in order to avoid confusion with the original project, I
personally think it would be nice that a fork adopted a distinct name.
Especially if the fork is significantly diverging from the original
project and created without talking to the original developers (because
they do not reply, in the present case, but that doesn't change the
fact that they were not got in touch with...).

I agree with Paul Wise (pabs3) that "diplayCAL-ng" (or
"displayCAL-py3") is probably too similar to the original name to avoid
confusion. You should come up with something more creative (maybe
"FreeScreenCalibrator"? or "calibscreen"?).

By the way, avoiding confusion is the main point of (sane) trademark
laws.

I hope this helps, at least a bit.


--
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..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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